After the war, Mary's family moved to Blount Springs, Alabama, and Mary resumed her writings which included published articles in the New York Weekly Tribune.

The stories were mostly travel dialogues and her explorations into
the wilderness of central and west Alabama.

These were later published under her most famous work: Sketches of Alabama in 1887.

Mary died in 1920 as a recluse up on Duffee Mountain. There are those in the area that say Mary's spirit remains in the mountains and sightings of "strange lights" are attributed to Mary "continuing her writings" with the help of candlelight.

I found a facinating article by Charles Henry Hamilton.

This is excerpt from the article:

"It was about the year 1903 when Captain Duffee died. My father, the Rev. John H. Hamilton performed the burial for him. He was buried under a big poplar tree beside his father and mother. These graves was a stones throw from the old house they lived in. The house was built of wood. The front porch faced Blount Springs and had an 8 foot porch with railing around it. I went into the house with Miss Mary at this time and one room was piled about half way up the walls with newspapers and magazines. All kind of reading material and letters. She saved everything. The next room was full of twigs piled up with only a narrow place to walk through. Miss Mary was so afraid of fire, after her parents died, and would not allow a fire in the house. She would take a few twigs of wood outside the house and had a brick circle with rocks piled around this circle in which she would place the twigs and make a fire to make her coffee and to boil water. She did most of her cooking outside. The home was a six room house built on a "L" shape. Three rooms run back of each other. She lived in the east room and the house faced south of Blount Springs. The last room was the kitchen and next to it was a dining room. The other room was her brothers. After the funeral of Captain Duffee, that day, she told my father to come into the house and she gathered up all her brothers clothes and all his belongings and said, "Here John, take all these things for your boys. I don't want anything that belonged to my brother left here. Do as you please with any of them. I don't want them in the house"."

"Miss Mary was six feet tall, slender and always dressed in a Mother-Hubbard dress or in men's clothes. She always carried a long rifle with her and she rode horseback, always side saddle. Her hair was sandy, combed to the back of her head and tied with a ribbon in a knot. She weighed about 130 pounds and wore high top laced shoes. I never saw her with a hat on. She would put a shawl over her head in bad weather and a croaker-sack around her shoulder and tied it under her neck fastened with a safety pin.

When I got near Miss Mary's house and near to her window, I called out to her, "Miss Mary," for a few minutes I heard no reply. And again I said, "Miss Mary, can I come in to see you?" She said, "I don't want to see anybody, go away!" I said, "Miss Mary, I am Charlie Hamilton, Rev. John Hamilton's son that you used to give me nickels when I was a little boy. I want to see you again, please." And she said, "If you are Charlie Hamilton, open that door and come in. I want to see you too." I opened the door and told her I had my wife and daughter with me, and she said, "Please come in." It was a sight I will never forget. It almost broke my heart to see her. She was frail, white as snow. Her bed had fallen in through the floor partly and she was lying cross-wise on a æ bed. Even though it was summer time, she had old quilts on her. She held out her feeble hand and I held it with tears in my eyes. And she also began to shed tears. With her voice weak, she said to me, "I am glad you came. I don't have many more days left." We stayed about 30 minutes and I asked her if I could take her down the mountain to be cared for until her death and she said, "No. I want to die here and you know where to bury me." I saw it was making her weak to talk and when we got ready to leave, I said, "Miss Mary, are you a Christian? Do you believe in God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ?" She answered me and said with tears in her eyes, "Charlie, I have been a Christian all my life. I do believe in God. I have never done anyone any harm. I love God and hope to be with him soon." She asked me to have a prayer with her and I did. She was lying cross ways on this bed and my wife and I helped to put her straight in bed. And I fixed the floor the best I could with what I could find. She was clean. Her hair combed back as she always wore it. She said, "Thank you, Charlie for coming and God bless you and your family." Mary and Isaac Point would go every day and clean her up, change her bed and night clothes, bring her food and feed her. I sure hated to leave her like that, but it was all I could do. I could not get back the next day. I had told her when I left I would be back again to see her. Two days later a runner from the mountain came down looking for me and said that Miss Mary was dead and had requested for me to bury her. I was a local minister at the time. I knew what I had to do and, with God's help, I did just what I knew Miss Mary would want me to do."

The addition of your research information discoveries along with clear photos of the headstones makes this a truly excellent ride report. I aways enjoy your reports. Thanks for sharing this one with us.

"Rev. L.D. Hatch died, here at Blount Springs, Alabama, on the 7th of October, 1886, in the seventy-third year of his age. Mr. Hatch was a native of North Carolina, and he moved to Alabama about the year 1883. He graduated at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and afterwards in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey. The latter part of his life was devoted to the noble and self-sacrificing work of a missionary among the negroes in the bounds of Tuscaloosa Presbytery."

"Kind, generous, noble, and devout, he lived among us without reproach as a gentleman, patriot, and christian, held in universal esteem; and when called to a higher and better world, he died without fear,amid the universal regrets of a community in which there was not one who bore towards him the last ill-will."

Every once in a while I remember a one of these my grandmother took me to in Demming wa. On hill top that was slipping away. Still a lost place because only the really old people knew of it. 30 years on I couldn't even tell you were it was. How long well we all rest before being forgotten? London has thousand of graves under well traveled sidewalls that only the ghost know of.

__________________
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body,but rather to skid in sideways totally worn out shouting WHAT A RUSH, WHAT A RIDE.
"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." Charlie Chaplin